Day One - Growing my own

Talofa and welcome to my blogging series 'My Garden Rules'.  Unlike the 'My Kitchen Rules' where there are teams who compete against each other, my blog will be just about my own personal experiments growing food in my own backyard, front yard, windowsill etc... you get my drift.  I actually started my 'no dig' garden in Feb 2010.  I managed to grow a few things in it like lettuce, silverbeet, spring onions, chives, parsley and cabbages, I ended up neglecting my garden as I got busy with other things like work, study,. having a baby etc. 

Fastforward a year a bit later, here I am feet firmly on square one ready to start again.  Why blog about a garden especially when I am definitely not an expert on gardening? Well, my reasons for gardening are to:

1. Save money - have you seen the price of veges in the supermarket lately? I rest my case. 
2. Improve my family's health - eating our own home grown produce will be a lot better for us than the supermarket stuff (although the supermarket produce will probably look ten times better).  The other side of family health is the exercise we will be getting doing the actual gardening.  Who needs to go to the gym when you can sweat it out for free at home?
3. Get my kids to do something with me that will be educational, fun and hopefully be something that they will have good memories of when they grow up.
4. Try something new - I am usually terrified of change, and of doing something that takes me outside of my comfort zone but I am going to have a good go at this and hopefully start something that we can keep going for years to come. 

This year I have enlisted the help of two young assistant gardeners to get the ball rolling.  These two staff members are young, fit and best of all are willing to work not for peanuts, but for cookies and chocolate chip pancakes.

This is one part of the garden. The rest I will have to make up from scratch so if that means using old tyres, buckets and building more raised beds or just digging the ground than so be it (easier typed than done).  The next blog will show something new that we have done with our garden whether it will be planting seedlings, weeding, improving the soil etc.. we will have something to show with each post.  If you have any gardening experience or are a complete novice like me, drop me a line - I'd love to hear your thoughts on what to do or what not to do!